Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Before You Sleep | 1998 | Linn Ullmann | Buy |
| 2 | Stella Descending | 2000 | Linn Ullmann | Buy |
| 3 | Grace | 2002 | Linn Ullmann | Buy |
| 4 | A Blessed Child | 2005 | Linn Ullmann | Buy |
| 5 | The Cold Song | 2011 | Linn Ullmann | Buy |
| 6 | Unquiet | 2015 | Linn Ullmann | Buy |
| 7 | Girl, 1983 | 2025 | Linn Ullmann | Buy |
Linn Ullmann has published seven standalone novels over nearly three decades, each one a self-contained story about people navigating family ties and emotional distance. Her debut, Before You Sleep (1998), introduced the themes she would return to throughout her career: love that falters, memories that persist, and the difficulty of truly knowing the people closest to you. Stella Descending (2000) and Grace (2002) continued in this vein, with prose that is spare and carefully controlled.
A Blessed Child (2005) expanded her scope to follow three half-sisters and their complicated relationship with a shared father. The Cold Song (2011) gathers a family at a summer house where tensions build beneath polite surfaces. Her two most recent novels have moved closer to her own life. Unquiet (2015) is rooted in her relationship with her father, filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, and Girl, 1983 (2025) continues that autobiographical turn. The seven novels work independently, but reading them in order reveals an author whose concerns have deepened and become more personal over time.